Crime statistics

[forgotten_aria]

One of the things that's important to me is I feel safe in my home, so I've written a few of the towns off for bad grime statitics, which feels silly when there is a house on the town line or other approximation. I really wish I had a map of WHERE the crimes happen. I found this one map, but it only had data for the town with the lower crime statitics. Now, part of this might be that the town has better police department or that the town just has a really bad downtown area or alike (the town in question is lynn, and if you look at the maps, lynn is composed of a very dense area and then the more suburban area around the reservations.)

The houses in lynn are asking for about 100k less than in Saugus, the neighboring town, so this would be a very important thing to figure out. The Lynn police department does seem to be less participator, which means they have less data on the web (Saugus has their crime log up, for instance.)

Anyone know of any good crime mapping sights that might have data mined things not on the internet?

Comments

[pekmez.livejournal.com]

jcgbigler might be able to give you his subjective impression of different neighborhoods, since he used to live there - though not all neatly formatted data mined info. :)

[chenoameg.livejournal.com]

I remember the same frustration when we were looking for a house before buying this one.

My solution was to read the local paper's crime report every week and keep the map in my head, but that's not super practical.

I wonder if there are neighborhood watch groups in the areas you're looking at that might have helpful information?

[avacon.livejournal.com]

Some police departments also have annual reports with maps
that can be helpful. (I got one of those for Cambridge
many years ago...) Note that there are often some strange
inversions, such as certain types of crimes actually
being more common in the "safer" areas as there's more
worth stealing there.

[athereal.livejournal.com]

Downtown Lynn (Central Square, by Lynn Common, etc) is a cesspool, plain and simple. The parts closer to city lines are a lot nicer. Ward I is the "desirable" part of Lynn, up on the northern bit going up towards the hospital/Lynnfield. There is a small chunk of nice area down by the water (the "Diamond District"), but it's surrounded by a lot of badness. Houses in west Lynn by the Saugus line aren't too bad, but it can vary depending on the street. Look for neighborhoods chock-full of single families in decent condition - multifamilies generally mean lower income and higher crime.

I don't know where to find specifics on crime, but I get a decent idea from working for the friendly local ambulance company. Where specifically are you looking? I've been looking in Lynn myself 'cause I can't afford Salem...

[alphacygni]

I'm starting to know some things about Lynn pretty well, because of work. I can tell you pretty in-depth detail about the transit there, if that is important to you. Feel free to email me any questions. I think Central Square is not as much of a horrible place as it once was, but the pace of improvement may not be fast enough for you - it all depends.

The traffic is HORRIBLE, though. That I can tell you for sure.

[nathanjw]

The tricky bit for me about crime is that a great deal of it is among people who know each other and have disagreements that they are settling violently; since I'm not in these groups, that form of crime doesn't affect my safety very much. Unfortunately, separating out the "random crime" isn't really easy and depends on having a sense of the place, but I do think that random crime is the minority in most "high crime" areas.